A new dawn?

The world is having a green moment. From the Sun to the Economist, Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger, yesterday's Stern report to celebrities in electric cars, we appear to have reached a global tipping point in eco-awareness. But is the carbon-guzzling west really prepared to change its behaviour? And has our epiphany come too late? Andy Beckett reports

Eighteen years ago, Jonathon Porritt, then and now one of Britain's best-known environmentalists, co-wrote a book called The Coming of the Greens. The late-80s surge in green consciousness in Britain was well under way, but the book was a judicious mix of optimism and pessimism. It concluded with a discussion of what Porritt called "the brinkmanship theory" of green campaigning. "Only when a major catastrophe looms," he wrote, "will the necessary international cooperation, awareness and solidarity be forthcoming. There is some hope in such a strategy, but it entails high risks ... By the time we get to the brink, the momentum and systemic inertia which took us there may well be too strong to reverse."

In 2006, Porritt's predictions seem uncomfortably accurate. Over the past 18 months, in Britain and beyond, global warming has become as ubiquitous an issue as any green activist could dream of. From the Sun to the Economist, from Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Bishop of London, from An Inconvenient Truth to the national curriculum, from David Cameron to Richard Branson, from big ministerial speeches to celebrities with electric vehicles, from watershed government publications such as yesterday's Stern report to warnings about flying too much in Lonely Planet guidebooks, anxiety about climate change has taken hold in places that decades of other green campaigns failed to penetrate. In a British opinion poll conducted by Ipsos Mori this September, global warming was ranked "the most serious threat to the future wellbeing of the world", beating terrorism and war by almost two to one.

The way people think about global warming has also hardened. "Five years ago it would have been polite to have a debate at a dinner party about whether climate change exists," says professor Nick Pidgeon of Cardiff University, an authority on public attitudes to the environment. "Now it is not. The debate would be, 'What are you doing about it?' " In the Ipsos MORI poll, the proportion of respondents who believed there was "no such thing as climate change" was 1%. In the same month, it was reported that even the world's most prominent climate-change sceptic, US President George Bush, was changing his mind: his State of the Union address next January would include bold plans for the United States to reduce carbon emissions. The story has not been convincingly denied.

In Britain, a climate-change bill setting out decade-by-decade targets for reducing British carbon emissions is expected to be included in the Queen's speech on November 15. The government is thinking about taxes on flights and high-emission cars. An international day of action on climate change is planned, including a march and rally in London. Next week, the latest international talks on global warming begin in Nairobi.

When an issue achieves such momentum, the unthinkable begins to look practical. "In 1990, when I proposed personal carbon rationing," says the radical British environmentalist Mayer Hillman, "I was laughed out of court for lack of political realism." This July, the environment secretary David Miliband indicated his enthusiasm for the idea. "That cheered me up more than anything in the last 10 years," says Hillman.

The modern green movement has been at work in Britain since the 60s. The rise of environmentalism in other rich countries has been similarly gradual. But has its moment finally come? And has it come too late?

Outside B&Q in Wandsworth, south London, three lanes of mid-morning traffic sit fuming. A banner hanging from the storefront reads, "15% off all towel warmers." Yet inside, a small revolt against 21st-century energy profligacy is being attempted. Directly facing the entrance, looming like very tall guests at a drinks party over a display of solar panels, is a pair of domestic wind turbines. They are not elegant: an assembly of boxes and cylinders about 10 feet tall, grey paint already a bit chipped, £1,498 each.

Yet about every third customer stops to look at them. A television monitor beside the turbines plays a short film that could almost have been scripted by Friends of the Earth. "Electricity dominates modern life," it begins, "but the power stations producing electricity are pumping out carbon-dioxide emissions ..." People crowd around and listen. There are posh young men in jeans and jumpers, builders with paint on their trousers. They all take leaflets, ask the staff questions, earnestly give each other green energy tutorials.

A middle-aged man in a blue anorak lingers longest. "I'm very much attracted by the turbine idea," he says, watching the film for at least the third time. "I'd happily pay the money. I was buying energy-efficient lightbulbs when they they cost £9 a throw, six years ago. We've all got to do our bit."

But then his mouth curls down. "I'm not sure they'll work in London. Not enough wind. And what if you're the first person in your street to get one? I'm not sure the neighbours will be happy. How noisy is it? What's if it's been running 14 months and the bearings dry out? What if it's been a hot summer? And what about putting it up? I had to get a specialist company to put my Sky dish up high enough to work." His mouth softens again: "If I thought my house was suitable, and I genuinely thought the thing would last, I would make the investment." But his eyes suggest he won't.

A younger man with a motorcycle helmet under his arm is more frank. "The turbines are a nice idea. But they could be better. They're a crappy colour. A lot of people say they look ugly. It's a classic product designed by engineers. I like innovations, but environmental stuff has got to be compatible with your daily life."

Currently, acquiring a B&Q wind turbine involves paying up front, then having your property deemed suitable by the manufacturer, then getting planning permission, then having the turbine fitted. When I visited the Wandsworth store, the turbines had been on sale there for two weeks. "Lots of interest," said one of the shop staff as she hovered around the display, "but there hasn't been a purchase yet."

When you talk to British environmentalists about attitudes to climate change, they often mention something called "the action gap". What this phrase means is that Britain - even in the past year or two, as denying global warming has become disreputable, and local as well as distant weather events have started to feel ominous, and popular sentiments about climate change have shifted from vague guilt to worry to something approaching outright terror - has not been living like a society about to change its ways.

British carbon emissions - per person about half the level of America's, but about four times the level of China's - have fallen by almost a tenth since 1990. Yet British emissions rose in 2004, and according to provisional government figures they rose again in 2005. One of the fastest-growing sources of British emissions is transport, and in this area most of the indicators are moving in the wrong direction. Foreign travel is growing rapidly, but use of the Channel Tunnel is falling; car ownership is rising fast, but fuel consumption is barely improving; the environmental cost of cheap flights has become a commonplace, but Britons keep buying second homes abroad - in 2000 there were just over 150,000, and now there are almost 250,000, almost a third outside Europe.

Next to such consumer appetites, the signs of people changing their behaviour seem very small. British sales of the G-Wiz electric car are "pushing up to two a day", says the company that has sold it here since 2004 - which works out at roughly six cars for every article about the G-Wiz in a national newspaper. Visits to carboncalculator.com, a website recommended in green circles that offers to measure your carbon emissions, advises you on how to reduce them and measures the improvement, are currently running at 40 a day.

In the downstairs lobby at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, there is a noticeboard for visitors to pin up their views on a "topic of the week". Last week, the topic was "What do you understand by the term carbon offsetting"? By Tuesday morning, there were only three responses; the most memorable read, in underlined capital letters, "soothing my guilty conscience".

David Miliband does not appear discouraged. He has been environment secretary for only six months, but he has already achieved the prominence in the debate on climate change you might expect of someone frequently mentioned as a future Labour leader. He bobs in his chair and summarises the hopeful aspects of the current situation, characteristically, in numbered points: "One: climate change is a reality, not a debate now. Two: there is an international process addressing it. Three: green growth is not just a twinkle in the eye of business. And four: the Tories have moved out of the Stone Age." He pauses. "Well, some Tories."

He acknowledges the difficulty, however, of turning a consensus into an acceptable policy. "Climate change is the biggest political challenge, full stop. It is about fundamental change in the way people live and work. An environmental contract between governments and citizens in the 21st century like the social contract between governments and citizens in the 20th." What sort of Britain does he envisage if carbon emissions are drastically cut? "If you are optimistic, we're going to have a higher quality of life. Buildings with natural light are more pleasant. Local, seasonal food is tastier. Smog-free cities are better than smoggy ones. I don't think we have to turn the clock back to 1900."

I ask about carbon rationing. His smile fades for a moment. "I think ration has such a 1940s connotation. I'm not sure it works." The smile returns: "Shared is a better word than rationed. I'm quite excited about personal allowances. Carbon credit cards. I think it's a powerful idea."

British environmentalists, who have often expressed disappointment with the Blair government, are strikingly positive about Miliband so far. They hope that he and other young ministers such as Yvette Cooper and Douglas Alexander, who grew up with the environment as a mainstream issue, will treat it as more than a political optional extra from now on.

But doubts remain. Even Porritt, who is chairman of the government's sustainable development commission, admits to them: "We're not much more than a year away from the 2005 election, at which the environment was cast out into the darkness as an issue," he says. "I've seen a few too many of these green enthusiasm spikes. The environment absolutely can't spend another 30 years going in and out of fashion."

The first false dawn for British greens was in the early 70s. Conservation and animal welfare, already established causes, came together with hippy idealism and the decade's propensity for apocalyptic thinking; a green movement crystallised that quickly seemed to attain political and cultural influence. Books such as The Limits to Growth and A Blueprint for Survival, which warned of an imminent planetary "Doomsday" caused by pollution, overpopulation and modern life in general, became huge bestsellers. The Blueprint authors were invited to address MPs. In 1970 the department of the environment was created.

But then seemingly more pressing political priorities - recessions, strikes, terrorism - took over. The 1973 oil crisis briefly reversed the growth of air travel and of world carbon emissions, but this reflected the new price of fuel rather than a genuine conversion to greener living. "We were a little bit naive," says Satish Kumar, then and now the editor of Resurgence, the first British green magazine. "We were thinking that we would win the argument quicker."

From the late 70s to the mid-80s, with Doomsday failing to arrive, British environmentalists toned down their rhetoric and endured a lower profile. Under Margaret Thatcher, factories closing rather than factories polluting was the controversial issue; it was only when the economy seemed relatively healthy again that the environment returned to being a mainstream concern. Bad news about the planet - acid rain, the deforestation of the Amazon, the discovery in 1985 of an ozone hole over the Antarctic - became a media staple. Thatcher appointed Sir Crispin Tickell as a high-profile adviser on the environment in general and on climate change (then more commonly "the greenhouse effect") in particular. In June 1989, he issued a typical warning that global warming would create refugees from the worst-affected countries. Yet his warnings had a limited effect: exactly the same story appeared in the British press last month.

The public response to environmental fears may reflect the spirit of the times. In the 70s, people bought eco-polemics; in the 80s, they bought eco-products: recycled toilet paper, green detergents, sometimes almost anything with the word green on the label. "Late-80s green consumerism was often quite flaky," says Porritt. In 1989, Tesco, busy building out-of-town superstores with acres of parking, announced plans to "go green" and was taken at face value by the press. Pro-business tabloids announced their conversion to the green cause. The sense of a green bubble grew strongest in that year's European elections, when the Green party won 15% of the British vote, vastly more than it had ever won before.

Mike Childs, campaigns director of Friends of the Earth, was one of many activists recruited to the green movement in the late 80s. But he concedes: "There wasn't anything in green consumerism that challenged people's lifestyles." In the recession of the early 90s, people cut back on green products, which tended to cost more. In the boom that followed, people went back to consuming more of everything. "The 90s were a totally wasted decade," says Porritt. Miliband drily summarises the climate change implications: "We'll regret the passing of those years."

The proportion of rubbish recycled by the average British household did not reach 10% until 1999. In Islington in north London, a typically difficult urban area in which to collect recycling, it was still less than 10% at the end of 2004. But since then the borough has improved its recycling rate so fast - it is now almost 25% - that the potential of state-sponsored environmentalism can be glimpsed.

Halfway up the thundering Holloway Road, just before a railway bridge bearing the grafitti, "It's Global Warming Stoopid", in large pink letters, a narrow side street runs off to the west. At the end, past several construction sites, is a silvery metal shock of a building like a simplified version of Gehry's Guggenheim in Bilbao. The Hornsey Street Waste Re-Use And Recycling Facility has been open since July 2004. Kenny Wilks, Islington's head of street environment services, describes it as "the only recycling centre of its kind in London if not the UK". You could also describe it as an outpost of a new state religion.

As well as areas for the public and council employees to deposit everything from fridges to spectacles, the facility contains an education centre for instruction in the practice and principles of recycling. "There's going to be a time when all the children in Islington will have visited," says Wilks. He smiles the broad smile of a public official with a growing empire. "Get 'em while they're young."

Sitting in his office, with a cute toy plane made from a drinks can dangling from the ceiling and enough desk staff to run a biggish newspaper next door, Wilks outlines other ambitions. He would like the borough's vehicles that collect household recycling to play jingles, like ice-cream vans. He would like uplifting holograms to be projected onto the walls of the recycling centre's public areas. He would like to meet the government's target of a 50% recycling rate by 2020. "Are we going to go down the compulsory route?" he says before I can ask. He talks about "carrots and sticks" for a few uncharacteristically vague sentences. Then he settles on a concluding sentiment: "We're taking a holistic approach to waste."

Downstairs in the public recycling area, which is windowless and grey, the air smells of rot and exhaust fumes. Currently 9,000 cars and vans a month are dropping off material in the lines of metal skips. At weekends, the busiest time, vehicles sometimes have to queue for the dozen parking bays for up to 20 minutes. Tempers have been known to fray. But today, at teatime on a Friday, the only visitors are Ruth and Joe, a young couple with a car full of old radiators and a fridge. They haul them to the skips, covering their jeans in dust and grease, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Are they doing anything else to combat climate change? "I like the idea of wind-generated electricity," says Ruth. "We use energy-saving bulbs," says Joe. "But they're not very bright, though."

Drastically curbing Britain's carbon emissions - let alone the world's: British emissions are a 50th of the total - will be an enormous task. Environmentalists and all three main parties agree that the impetus will have to come from government; but government tends to be trusted very little by the public and by business these days. Already, the more hostile responses to the Stern report and to Miliband's recently leaked thoughts about introducing fairly minor green taxes give a taste of the resistance to come.

There are modern precedents for changing entrenched public behaviour by state regulation - drink-driving, smoking in public places - yet these are much smaller matters. Miliband insists that cutting British carbon emissions "is not a technological challenge". We have the means now to generate cleaner energy, drive cleaner cars, properly insulate our homes. But he concedes there is a large exception: aviation. "If people are going to fly more," he says, "they are going to have to do less of something else." Given that a single long-haul flight, notoriously, has the same carbon footprint as a year's motoring, the lifestyle trade-offs selected in future by the world's electorates and their politicians are going to be interesting.

And for all the green talk from modern business executives, the commitment of many of them to what will probably be the greatest increase in state regulation since the pre-Thatcher era has to be questioned. As Childs puts it: "If John Browne, the chief executive of BP, said tomorrow, 'We're withdrawing our investments from fossil fuels,' he'd take a hiding on the stock market and lose his job the next day."

Then again, the world as designed by stock markets and international corporations has not been an unqualified success. A fortnight ago, I went to see Al Gore's eco-film, An Inconvenient Truth, at a cinema near Heathrow airport. The area round the cinema was like an advertisement for the drawbacks of pre-climate change capitalism: speeding traffic, rat-runs, new flats like glass hutches, jets so loud overhead you could hear them in the auditorium.

Besides me, there was an audience of six: three mothers with young babies. Afterwards, in the multistorey carpark, I talked to one of the women, a television producer in her 30s called Kim. "We're all hypocrites when it comes to the environment," she began. Her Audi estate looked new and very shiny. She jangled her car keys.

But she was happy to talk about green taxes for half an hour. "David Miliband - it's good listening to him on the environment," she said at the end. "I remember 20 years ago, the great fervour then. Greenpeace, the Rainbow Warrior ..." She added with some intensity: "I really hope something happens this time. I really do." Another jet passed overhead. She got into her Audi and drove out into the boiling autumn sunshine.